Pure Dead Frozen (5 page)

“As crystal, Your Vileness.”

“NOW, WHEN I SAY ‘DESTROY,' I DON'T MEAN ‘DESTROY' AS IN ‘DROP A BOMB ON TOP OF.' NOR DO I MEAN ‘DESTROY' AS IN ‘EXECUTE.' NO GUNS, KNIVES, OR DYNAMITE, UNDERSTOOD?”

“Perhaps You mean more of a mental and spiritual destruction, Your Nastiness?”

“PRECISELY. DELIGHTED TO HEAR YOU BACK ON FORM, MINISTER. I MEAN BREAK HIM, CRUSH HIS SPIRIT, DESTROY EVERYTHING THIS MAN BELIEVES IN, YES? BUT LEAVE
HIM
STANDING. MY CLIENT WAS VERY CLEAR ON THAT POINT. HE SPECIFICALLY DEMANDED THAT HIS HALF BROTHER WAS TO BE LEFT ALIVE. ALIVE, BUT SO PSYCHOLOGICALLY DAMAGED THAT HE'D WISH HE WERE DEAD. THAT'S THE BRIEF.”

Isagoth stared across the tiny room, his mind spinning with vicious possibilities.

“SHOULDN'T BE TOO DIFFICULT,” S'tan continued. “ONE WOULD DO IT ONESELF, BUT ONE IS BUSY WITH CAREER MATTERS REQUIRING ONE'S CONTINUED PRESENCE IN LONDON AND THE VICTIM IS IN SCOTLAND, SO…”

“Leave it to me, Your Vindictiveness,” Isagoth breathed. “Consider it done. Whoever he is, he'll wish he'd never been born…. Er…Boss? Who is it?” Not trusting his ability to remember names, Isagoth grabbed the first thing he could find in the darkness and scrawled the name of Luciano Strega-Borgia in waterproof, super-permanent indelible pink laundry marker across the back of his hand. As he wrote Luciano's name, he realized that he knew
exactly
who this prospective victim was. Luciano Strega-Borgia. The man in the parking lot with the no-longer-pregnant wife. Mr. Butler's boss. And—Isagoth closed his eyes and swayed slightly—Luciano Strega-Borgia was also the boss of that infernal, pestilential nanny thing, that Flora McLachlan who'd got him in such deep water in the first place….

It wasn't until S'tan hung up that Isagoth remembered about the baby. In the heat of the moment he'd forgotten to mention that he'd found a newborn soul, ripe for the taking. Since souls were regarded as a superior form of currency in Hades—the demonic equivalent of, say, gold doubloons—it was to Isagoth's considerable advantage that he'd stumbled across such a one. He had a sneaking suspicion that the baby might have some intrinsic value here on Earth as well. Therefore, he vowed, no matter how inconvenient it might be to kidnap it, that was precisely what he intended to do.

Their Baby's Deepest Fear

T
he hospital ward was tropically hot, its thermostat set at a perfect temperature for raising orchids, nursing the old and frail, and overheating any visitors unwise enough to arrive dressed in anything more substantial than a bikini. Consequently, the tribe of Strega-Borgias and staff gathered around Baci's bedside, all of them swathed in layers to insulate them against the freezing winter weather, were in imminent danger of melting. Furthermore, being adolescents, Titus and Pandora flatly refused to remove any outdoor clothing at all, and thus they stood, pink and perspiring, looking down at their new baby brother with expressions several smiles short of delight.

Seeing this, Baci bit her bottom lip and tried hard not to cry, but Damp had no such qualms. She wriggled free from Mrs. McLachlan's grasp, hurtled across the ward, sprang onto Baci's bed, and burst into loud and inconsolable sobs. Titus and Pandora traded been-there-done-that looks and then resumed their identical expressions of faint boredom. Damp wailed all the more, attracting slitty-eyed glares from Sister Passterre, who was counting scalpels with an air of barely concealed anticipation. In vain did Luciano try to appease the wailing toddler; Damp was beyond appeasement, consolation, comfort, or even bribery.

“…and because you're being so
big
and
grown-up
”—Luciano rolled his eyes, acknowledging to his wife that he was indeed lying through his teeth about Damp's behavior—“Mumma and Dada have bought you a
lovely
new tricycle.”

“
That
old trick,” muttered Titus, walking away from the crowded bedside to gaze out of the window. Outside, in pajamas and dressing gown, was a man walking with the aid of two crutches. Despite the cold, he was determinedly crossing the frosty lawn, trying to catch the attention of two lumpy figures shrouded in thick coats, the photo IDs dangling round their necks marking them out as hospital employees leaving at the end of their shift. Behind Titus, Damp eloquently declined her father's generous offer.

“NO LIKEIT. No WANTIT tie-sickle.”

And Titus was instantly transported back in time, all the way back to an August morning, eleven years ago, when—

         

They'd promised him a tricycle, but instead they showed him a shawl-wrapped thing lying in his old rocking cradle. He'd looked out of curiosity and saw, under a puff of jet-black hair, a pair of navy blue eyes glaring up at him, surrounded by a pink crumpled thing that he hesitated to call a face.

“Here's your little sister, Pandora, darling.”

So…
that's
what it was. He'd turned away, but a banshee wail made him turn back. A hole had opened in the middle of the crumpled pinkness and deafening noises were coming from it. Titus watched with interest as his parents ran around like headless chickens.

“Shouldn't you feed her?”

“She's just been fed.”

“Well…shall I change her?”

Into what? wondered Titus, alone and overlooked.

“Oh, I can't bear to hear her cry like that….”

“Well,
do
something, then.”

“I don't know what to do. We've tried everything.”

“I
know what,” said Titus, sensing a chance to become less lonely and overlooked. “Let's take it back to the hostiple.”

         

As he returned to the present, Titus could still recall the look on their faces. Pandora's arrival had been a turning point in his life, a milestone after which nothing had ever been the same. Sleety rain blatted against the windows, drawing Titus's attention to the world beyond the hospital. Outside, the man on crutches had managed to blag a cigarette from one of the off-duty staff. Now he was hunched over, trying to light it, both his crutches abandoned on the lawn, a strange bright pink mark, or tattoo, on his left hand. He straightened up, took several unaided and apparently pain-free steps toward the hospital like a miracle cure in action, and then, spotting Titus staring at him, he spun round, loped back across the lawn, seized his discarded crutches, and turned to face the window. Despite the heat in the ward, Titus was instantly frozen to the core. The man smiled slowly—a vile parody of a smile: a leer, a sneer, more of a snarl, really—and then…

“
AoWW!
My
eye
!” Titus yelped, jerking backward from the window, both hands flying up to his face in a belated attempt to protect himself. A white-hot needle of pain flared in one eye, as if a sharp point had been plunged straight into his eyeball. Tears streamed through his fingers as the outraged organ tried in vain to eject what ailed it. Blinded on one side, Titus couldn't even open his unaffected eye, because every blink was automatically and agonizingly duplicated by the injured one.

Several lifetimes scrolled by, or perhaps it was more a matter of several seconds, but for Titus, time lost all meaning. The icy burn in his eye was spreading across his skull, filling his ears with an avalanche of static hiss, stilling his tongue and catching at the back of his throat before finally seizing his heart, driving a spike through its frantically beating muscle and lodging itself as a splinter of ice deep within its innermost chamber. At which point the pain stopped.

Outside the window, the demon Isagoth gave Titus the thumbs-up and exhaled a gray plume of smoke. Titus frowned and turned away, a snowy amnesia descending on his thoughts and blanketing his memory in icy whiteness. Across the ward, Mrs. McLachlan had poured oil on troubled waters and now had both the new baby
and
Damp on her lap for an introductory chat.

“No, pet. Let's
not
pull the new baby's fingers off—he might need them later on…. Yes,
and
his eyes too. Useful things, eyes. Titus, dear, you look as if you've seen a ghost….”

Unaccountably, the new baby opened his navy blue eyes and began to scream in a manner that made further conversation impossible. Moments later, not to be outdone, Damp joined in, and shortly thereafter Sister Passterre reluctantly left her scalpels and came over to Baci's bed to declare that visiting time was over.

         

As the last visitor trooped gratefully out of the ward into the fresh air, a wintry sunshine dappled the ceiling above the new Baby Borgia's cot. The baby peered out at the world through dark blue eyes and tried to make sense of all the newness bombarding him from every angle. Sister Passterre's huge shape loomed, boomed, breathed hotly, and withdrew, roaring loudly to itself. Occasionally an efficient hand would haul the new baby's legs into the air and a sudden coolness would envelop its bottom. Slippery stuff would be slopped all about; then would come a scrunching, scrumpling sound, whereupon the baby's bottom would be once more encased in papery, padded warmth.

It was all so
new,
and mainly it was all fairly pleasant, but best by far was being wrapped in Baci's arms, where the new baby would surrender to the familiar beat of his mother's heart, surrender to her unique smell, surrender utterly to her particular brand of fumble-fingered, deeply devoted, soft and tender mothering….

The new baby slipped into a deep, deep sleep…

…was gently placed back in his cot……and woke abruptly into sheer hell.

Ungentle hands seized him like so much dirty laundry, a hand clamped over his tiny mouth, and he was jolted, bounced, and thrown about as something hard and huge and horrifying bore the helpless Baby Borgia away from everything and everyone that loved him.

         

A cloud had slid across the sun by the time Baci returned from her shower, and the ward was decidedly cooler, as if a door or window had been left open. The baby lay on its back, its green eyes watching where Baci stood nearby, furtively popping a champagne truffle into her mouth before jamming the box back into her locker and clambering back into bed. Stretching across to stroke the baby's cheek, Baci frowned. The baby's green eyes blinked back at her, and moments ticked past. Then a metallic clatter announced the arrival of morning coffee, and a distant telephone rang twice. Baci blinked and shook her head.
Obviously,
she thought,
I'm overtired. The baby's eyes have
always
been green. Honestly, whatever was I thinking?
Then, turning her attention to the approaching trolley, Baci wondered if there would be a little something to soak up the bitterness of the hospital's scaldingly hot and mouth-shrivelingly stewed coffee. And if not, she decided, absentmindedly stroking the baby's head, somewhere in her locker Mrs. McLachlan had tucked a small box of homemade lavender shortbread, which would more than compensate for any shortfall in the hospital's biscuit rations.

Forcing itself not to flinch or sink its needle-sharp teeth into Baci's hand, the changeling submitted to the petting. Never before had its raw skin been caressed. Never before had it known kindness. Raised in the nurseries of Hades, it had experience of being handled with only a kind of detached efficiency. Now here it was, encountering something utterly alien: a mother's loving caress. Baci's hands were warm, smooth, and gentle. Relaxing under her touch, the changeling baby closed its eyes and was asleep within seconds, dreaming, as it always did, of blood-red flames blossoming in the darkness like dangerous flowers.

Blow Your House Down

A
s had been his habit since taking Luciano on as an apprentice gunslinger, Ludo Grabbit brought his ancient Land Rover to a shuddering, rattling halt on the rose quartz drive outside StregaSchloss at eleven o'clock precisely. The house was silent, its windows blank, the surrounding gardens glittering under a rime of frost. However, the steps leading up to the front door had been de-iced with salt, and Latch's face at the open door was shining with happiness.

“The new baby?” Ludo murmured, preceding Latch across the hall toward the kitchen.

“A grand wee laddie for the Signor and Signora. Tucked up safe in hospital with his mammy.” Latch smiled, adding, “We're expecting them both home this afternoon.”

“Great stuff,” Ludo said, pushing through into the kitchen and beaming at the assembled company. “I believe congratulations are in order?”

“Yes,” said Titus flatly, his voice devoid of both color and enthusiasm. “We're very pleased.”

I don't
think
so,
Ludo decided.
I don't think you're pleased at all, young sir. What's up with this chap? Jealous? Surely not.
Ludo pressed on, “And where's the happy paterfamilias?”

“The
what
?”

“Oh, come
on,
Titus,” Pandora interrupted. “Stop being like this.” She turned to Ludo and said, “Ignore my brother. He'll improve once he's eaten something. Just think kindly of us all: you only have to endure this for one day in every seven;
we
have to put up with Mr. Grumple-Snurk every day of our lives….”

“Yeah, right,” mumbled Titus, the return of the nagging pain in his injured eye causing him not to rise to the bait. “If you mean Dad, he's upstairs, working out.”

Pandora rolled her eyes and groaned. “They're not called dumbbells for nothing, you know. I just
so
don't get it, all that huffing and puffing….”

Perhaps it's to stop a wolf from blowing your house down,
Ludo thought, smiling at the children and standing aside as Minty came into the kitchen from the garden, a breath of freezing air rolling in behind her. Damp stamped in behind her, her voice raised in determined inquiry.

“Why is newbaby coming home? Why not leave it in hostiple with Aunty Naytil?”

Minty wisely ignored this, merely assisting Damp out of her fleecy jacket, unwinding her scarf, and tucking both mittens into a pocket.

“Not wantit anyhow. Not like
boys
.”

“Thanks,” muttered Titus, shooting Damp a look out of his uninjured eye that ought to have freeze-dried all her internal organs. Minty tried to hide a smile by turning away to set the kettle on to boil, and thus found herself face to face with Ludo.

Months later, on honeymoon in the far northwest of Scotland, both Minty and Ludo agreed that they had fallen in love in that instant, in front of the unaware Strega-Borgia children in the kitchen at StregaSchloss. Ludo felt the floor tilt under his feet, and was assailed by such a feeling of vertigo that he grabbed the towel rail of the range for support. He closed his eyes briefly, utterly at a loss to explain what had just happened to him. Minty's hand holding the kettle trembled so violently that water slopped out of the spout and fell, hissing loudly, onto the stovetop. Ludo's eyes opened, and without hesitation he reached out to take the wildly shaking kettle from Minty's grasp. Smiling, he looked at her, really looked, marveling as he did at the blueness of her eyes, just as Minty came to the realization that Ludo's face was exactly the face that she wanted to wake up to every morning for the rest of her life.

“Yeah, Damp,” Titus snarled, blissfully unaware of the momentous events unfolding over by the range, being more concerned with exacting revenge for his youngest sister's blanket condemnation of all things boyish. “When
you
came along, both Pan and I took one look in your cot and went, ‘Eeeyew.
Babies
. Not like it, babies.' Fat lot of difference
that
made. They didn't take
you
back to hostiple either, no matter how many times we begged them to.”

Damp was saved from further unpalatable truths by the arrival in the kitchen of Luciano, fresh from exercising, aglow with sweaty virtue and in need of coffee, a second breakfast, and a more effective form of deodorant. Pandora took one look at her soggy father and rolled her eyes so hard that for a moment she resembled an extra from
Night of the Living Dead
. Damp clamored to be picked up for a hug, but once in her father's arms, she batted him away, wrinkling her nose and informing everyone within earshot, “Dada smells horbil. Go 'way, stinky, yuck.”

Stung, Luciano deposited his younger daughter on a nearby chair and turned his attention to Ludo.

“You'll have heard our good news, then?”

Ludo blinked several times, dragging his gaze away from Minty; this, he found to his dismay, appeared to require an unimaginable effort. “Er, ah…um,” he managed, and stopped to take a deep breath and try again. Fortunately, his training as a lawyer enabled him to talk fluently about one thing while thinking about something else entirely, and he pulled himself together, remembering the real reason he was here. “Delighted. Congratulations. You must be absolutely cock-a-hoop, old chap.” As he spoke, his mind was spinning off, down darker pathways. Despite the dizzying nearness of the young woman at his side, despite the faintest scent of lilies that she carried with her like an invisible bouquet, despite the fact that if he was stupid enough to let her slip out of his life, he would never be able to forgive himself…despite all of these, Ludo's first responsibility was toward Luciano and his family. Today there would be no shooting lessons for Luciano, because Ludo had come to StregaSchloss to inform Luciano that time had run out.

A known Italian associate of Luciano's evil half brother, Don Lucifer, had been arrested in Bologna and charged with murder. Upon arrival in the police station, young Fabbrizio had taken one look at his future cellmates and had decided at that instant to repent and turn his back on a life of crime. One word in his jailer's ear and he was escorted to a soundproofed cell and invited to spill the beans regarding the activities of his previous employer. Fabbrizio had recorded everything he knew about Don Lucifer di S'Embowelli Borgia onto a tape, a copy of which now nestled in the pocket of Ludo's tweed jacket. This was the reason for the lawyer's appearance at StregaSchloss that morning. Unaware that Ludo was the bearer of some very bad news indeed, Luciano smiled widely and crossed to the range to make coffee for his guest.

“We're
all
thrilled about our new baby,” Luciano lied, blatantly ignoring Titus's fisheyed expression, Pandora's deep, meaningful sighs denoting terminal boredom, and Damp's Beethoven-browed, bottom-lip-puckered pout. Spooning coffee beans into a grinder, Luciano continued, “I'm bringing Baci and Little No-Name back this afternoon, and rather than having a huge celebration now, we were thinking about holding a small party in about a fortnight's time. I would hope that you'd be able to join us….” The rest of his words were drowned out by the clatter and whine of the coffee grinder.

Ludo waited, keeping a tight leash on his urge to grab Luciano by the arm and scream, “For God's sake, man. You don't have time for parties, you don't even have time for coffee. You need to take your family,
all
of them, away from here, out of Argyll—maybe even the U.K.—and get yourselves into hiding before your half brother's hired assassins arrive on your doorstep.”

Instead, Ludo forced himself to smile and wait as Luciano spooned ground coffee into the bottom half of an ancient espresso maker, wait and smile while he replaced the top half and screwed it down tight, smile and wait as Luciano placed it on the burner, took milk out of the fridge, found the cups in the china cupboard…. It felt like whole lifetimes had slid by before Ludo finally found himself alone with Luciano, upstairs in the study. Moving a pile of manuals, correspondence, and assembly instructions for exercise equipment to one side, Luciano offered Ludo a battered wing chair and perched himself on a stool before taking a deep gulp from his cup and extolling the coffee's virtues.

“Delicious. You can really taste the dark-roast beans,” he muttered dreamily before Ludo broke into his reverie with the news he'd been dreading.

The only tape player Luciano could find at short notice belonged to Damp, its cheery pink and sparkly exterior singularly inappropriate for the ghastly content of the tape currently spooling inside it. Fabbrizio's voice was faint and whiny, but both Ludo and Luciano could make out most of what he was saying.

“…
si.
A pact. Don Lucifer made an agreement with Il Diavolo to destroy his half brother.”

“Il Diavolo? Is this another gangster?” Luciano whispered, almost to himself. Fabbrizio's voice continued, the subject matter under discussion bringing Luciano out in a cold sweat.

“The only name I ever hear Don Lucifer call this Diavolo was Stan. I do not know this Stan, but I do know that he is…pfff…very powerful. Like a gigantic octopus,
si? Capisce?
He has his tentacles dipped into every little pond and pool. There is nothing and nowhere that this Stan doesn't know about. I do not meet this Stan, for which I am very grateful.”

Luciano's eyes were closed, almost as if he thought he could blind himself to what was going on—as if by denying the evidence of his eyes he could avoid the whole ghastly mess. Fabbrizio's voice whined on.

“No. Stan was going to take care of this. Of all of them.
Si.
The wife and kids too—”
Here he broke off to give a mirthless snicker, as if the Strega-Borgias' lives were of no consequence, an amusing bit of target practice.
“Yeah. No one left standing. No one left alive to breed, to continue that branch of the
famiglia
Borgia. The end of the line. Who was going to do the job? All these questions,
signore.
I do not know—not Stan himself. No. No
way.
That would be
stupido.
Il Diavolo wouldn't risk getting personally involved. No, that's not how we do things. Stan would get one of his minions to do the dirty: a consigliere, a capo, a hired killer, some guy who's already in place in the area—”

Ludo stopped the tape, his eyebrows raised, his hand hovering on top of the pink tape player as if he were about to ask a child whether another wee sing-along before lights-out would be a good idea.

“‘In place in the area.'” Luciano's voice quavered. “But…but…”

“Yes,” Ludo murmured. “He's here already. Presumably he knows exactly where you are. Where Baci and—”

Luciano was on his feet. Moments later, the Volvo spun off across the drive, scattering rose quartz in all directions. Latch stood in the great hall, duster in hand, his puzzled expression reflected in the breastplate of a suit of armor he'd been polishing when Luciano had bolted past. Now Mr. Grabbit was running downstairs, taking the steps three at a time, obviously in a tearing hurry as well. Watching this reflected in the suit of armor, Latch saw the lawyer stop at the foot of the stairs, take a deep breath, and, as if he'd come to a decision, clear his throat and speak:

“Latch. Could we have a word? In private?”

“Right away,” Latch replied, poking his duster into the suit of armor's codpiece and turning round to face the lawyer. “Might I suggest the Discouraging Room, Mr. Grabbit? That way we can be assured of absolute privacy.”

This was no exaggeration. So depressing and meanly proportioned was this room that the whole of the present generation of the family had never once set foot over its threshold. Not once, not even out of curiosity. Consequently, it was freezing cold, smelled of mold, and lived up to its name admirably. Following Ludo inside, Latch pulled the door closed behind them.